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MBIArch Notes: Compulsory Sequence

MBIArch Notes

The 2011-2012 MBIArch master's program, which began mid-September, is organized in a set of four phases based on an evolving set of learning strategies. Last week marked the end of the first phase, known as the Compulsory Sequence, designed to provide the primary concepts driving the rest of the academic year.

The Compulsory Sequence aims at establishing a basis for the design production that will be undertaken throughout the remainder of the year. In keeping with its multidisciplinary approach, students participated in subjects ranging from technical and scientific disciplines to critical and theoretical lectures, including: Building Technologies (Agustí Obiol), A Paradigm Shift: Mediating Architecture Culture (Pep Avilés), Digital Culture (Juanjo González Castellon) and the Disruptive Urban Turn (Josep Anton Acebillo). Students also began the Productive Land Program a research and design lab intended to discuss the productive and energetic capacities of land, which will be carried out and completed in the second phase.


Students took a three-day research trip for the Productive Land Program (photo T.Brennan)

The Compulsory Sequence also included sessions with visiting lecturers Chris Wise and Toni Kotnik. Prof. Wise, an award-winning engineer and co-founder of London based ‘Expedition Engineering’, gave an introduction to Structural Design as a part of the Building Technologies course.  Dr. Kotnik, who also teaches at the Architectural Association in London and is a senior researcher at the ETH Zürich, gave a session titled Formalization of Architecture. Why Mathematics? as a part of Digital Culture.


Chris Wise, co-founder of Expedition Engineering with students after his session on Structural Design

Apart from the Productive Land Program and the last compulsory course titled Energy and Sustainability (Javier García Germán), the remaining courses held throughout the following three phases are selected by students through a lottery system. The 'lottery day', which was held at the end of the first phase, included presentations by those leading this year’s design studios and seminars. Courses in Architectural Design are articulated around the studios, and students were given the task of selecting a short design studio from proposals led by architects Cecilia Puga, Philippe Rahm or Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, and one core design studio to be developed with either Iñaki Ábalos, Pier Vittorio Aureli, or Pere Riera. The lottery presentations also incorporated the additional elective courses, with options including the theory seminars with visiting professors Philip Ursprung, Michael Jakob and Stan Allen.


Lottery Presentation – Michael Jakobs describing his seminar titled ‘Landscape or Landscapes? Why Theory Matters’


Model storage space starts to fill in the MBIArch Workspace

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